Everyone has an opinion about lock and load. It used to be the bread and butter of the trapdancing spec, and is now still an incredibly nice talent that’s well worth the points spent in it. What it does is proc from 20% of the ticks of black arrow outside its 22 second cooldown, providing you with a short window of time to fire off two explosive shots without causing a shot cooldown, taking ammo, or taking mana. In effect, you can fire three in a row. This post will go over how to use these procs.
I tell you to fire three explosive shots in a row. You think “This must be the easy part. Any primate with half a brain can press a button three times!” while furiously spamming explosive shot. This would be wrong! Because explosive shot is actually a 2 second damage over time effect that ticks three times, if you fire it every 1.5 seconds (as fast as you can), you will prevent the last tick of the DOT from hitting by overwriting it with a fresh explosive shot. There are two ways to deal with this. The right way that does the most DPS, and the wrong way that leaves DPS on the table.
The right way is to fire a shot every two seconds. As long as the flight time remains the same (neither you nor the boss move), you will be sure that all 9 ticks from all 3 shots will go off. In order to maximize your performance and reduce the chance of error, you might want to use some sort of addon to help you time this. I use Quartz, and I use a macro for explosive shot that looks like this:
/qt ESDot 2
/cast explosive shot
For the other stuff in my macro, see my relevant post.
The wrong way to use lock and load is to fire a shot (edit: other than kill shot, which has priority over all other actions) between free explosives. This is better than clipping the last tick, but not as good as firing your explosives every two seconds. The reason for this is that the earliest you can fire (for example) an aimed shot is 1.5 seconds after your first explosive shot, which then triggers another 1.5 second global cooldown. This means that you’re pushing your next explosive shot back by at least 1 second per “in between” shot, and that pushed back the next natural (neither locked nor loaded) explosive shot by at least two seconds. Waiting for half a second in between only costs you half a second per wait. Figure out the average damage per second, factoring in a 6 second cooldown, of your explosive shot, use that to calculate the loss of 1 second of it, and compare that to what you gained by an aimed shot and a steady. It’s never worth it.
Long story short:
- good = explosive, wait, explosive, wait, explosive.
- bad = explosive, aimed, explosive, steady, explosive.
Excellent post. The only reason I can think that people would recommend firing another shot between Explosive Shots is to ensure you don’t clip that last tick.
With addOns such as Quartz and PowerAuras there’s no reason you can’t set up your ui to notify you when it’s ok to fire the next Explosive Shot, thus better managing your dps.
Thank bud!
I couldn’t figure out how to make Power auras work this, so I kept it in quartz. Power auras is great for being notified when it’s time to start the whole “shoot wait shoot wait shoot” sequence though :)
With PowerAuras you can set it up to show a timer. I have mine setup to do a graphic with announce sound and a timer that counts backwards.
Now if you could just make it so LNL does not proc during flash freezes that would be nifty.
Problem is that the timer starts when the debuff hits, and you want to time the shots two seconds apart, regardless of how much flight time they waste. Just add the quartz command into your macro- that’s what works for me :)
Honestly: I’m counting (ES, twentyone, twentytwo, ES, twentyone, twentytwo, .. etc.). Works fine for me.
That’s cool- I tried that but I found I couldn’t rely in my internal clock. I have a tendency to overcompensate for lag and clip shots… once I found out that you could use a simple /qt command in a macro, I was thrilled.
[…] I stepped back and did some more reading. OutDps actually had a great tip for this and it utilized a tool I was already using – […]
While it’s true that Es->wait->Es->wait->Es is the optimal dps in general, that is not the true when Kill shot becomes available.
If target is in kill shot range and cooldown comes up then a ES->KS->ES->wait->ES or a ES->wait->ES->KS->ES rotation yields more dps than the standard one.
Since kill shot has a higher priority than all other shots, yes. I think I’ll edit this explicitly into the post though- thanks.
[…] For an in-depth explanation of how to execute Lock and Load I refer you to this post over at OutDps. […]
What if your black arrow is off cooldown during your three shot fun? Would the % damage increase make up for the lost second?
It will be extremely close. There have been sims run that support both sides of the data- I generally fire a BA if it becomes available during a lock and load, however when I started doing this, I noticed no appreciable change to my average DPS.
Can’t you just use macro exactly for ES?
#showtooltip Explosive Shot
/castsequence reset=2 Explosive Shot
won’t it work?
I believe that a /castsequence with only one action will operate the same way as a /cast and ignore the reset. If you were to add some “null” commands in there, then the problem is that if you accidentally hit it too soon, the reset of 2 seconds gets restarted on the second key press, as far as I know.
* good = explosive, wait, explosive, wait, explosive.
* bad = explosive, aimed, explosive, steady, explosive.
but isn´t it best
= explosive, aimed, wait(0,5 sec),explosive,…
Nope. Explosive shot is more DPS per cooldown than aimed, so unless you get a kill shot (or maybe BA) coming off cooldown during lock and load, just fire explosive shots and make sure they don’t clip.
but you have 2 secods to wait in this time you can make 1 other instant und wait 0.5 sekonds because aimed shoot only need 1,5 sekonds
No, you wait 2 seconds after firing explosive shot, not after it comes off cooldown. That’s the cooldown plus half a second.
it should be noted that you DON’T burn a full second if you do exp, aimed, exp, wait, exp because your GCD is only 1.27s with imp ret aura and no haste rating because of our built-in quiver speed bonus.
Also, it only takes 344 Haste Rating to suppress your GCD all the way down to 1.0sec while Quick Shots is active.
Hah, I wish. Haste does not affect the global cooldown of hunters. It only affects our steady shot cast time.
That macro
/qt ESDOT 2
what is required to make that work?
The quartz addon.
Thanks for the guide ..
A hunter with 1 T9 (4.7k GS) out DPS my hunter 4 T9 hunter with a gs score of over 5k -___-||
not sure which part i’m doing wrong ….
my spec is slightly different from the guide .. and my rotation is the same .. jsut that i fire black arrow b4 explosive shot ….
and i never fire a steady in between LnL …
so now i’m going to change my spec and follow the guide, hopefully it will boost my DPS ^^
——
can u create a post that discuss about Gem and Enchanting for armor and weapon ?
i’m using all agility gem … and 1 orange gem (+10agility+10crit rating) and a +10 to all state gem to activate my meta gem ….
is that the correct way ?
as for enchant ….
engineer does have some special enchant ….
exp : +23 agility to cloak … ( which normal enchant is just +22 )
and there’s also different kind of enchant on glove .. which i’m confussing …
not very sure my engineer glove enchant is better .. or its not …
+20 agility or +44 AP enchant is better ?
…….. ….. …
For gemming and enchanting, look into this one: http://outdps.com/2009/09/14/epic-gem-and-enchant-list/
For the DPS, be aware that a large part of your DPS is going to be how long you can safely stand still. You do much more DPS standing still than you do moving, so as you get better and more experienced at a particular fight, you’ll find your DPS goes up.
Nice !!
ya … i think thats really true …
thanks for reply
Just a little question. Can we use the macro for the first shot also ? Or will it mean that we will loose 2 seconds on the first ES if we do so ?
the macro does not delay your shot, it fires it immediately and then shows you a two second cooldown bar call “esdot”. You can use the macro for all your shots.
Thanks for the answer !
Hello,
First, thanks for this great website. I’ve learned a lot of useful things about playing a hunter by reading these articles you have wroten.
However, I have something to ask about. My latency is usually about 200-250 ms in raids, even though I have a good broadband connection – I think it’s because my realm’s server is located far away from my country. Therefore, should I take it into account when using this macro? Also, does it make any real difference if I put the Explosive Shot first, like this:
/cast Explosive Shot
/qt ESDot 2
I’ve been using this macro for some weeks now, and I noticed that sometimes I might clip the last Explosive Shot tick off if I immediately shoot it off when the timer goes to 0:00. I’m not an expert, and thus the only reason I can see doing this is my latency. So would it be better for me if I’d put the /qt ESDot 2 to the second line instead of the first one? Or if that doesn’t make any difference, should I change the two second timer into something like 2.05 or 2.1 seconds?
Thank you in advance.
Changing the order should not affect anything, however changing it to 2.1 or 2.2 (whatever’s needed) should do the trick.
Also, you might be able to improve your latency by disabling your Nagel algorithm- it’s a function of the way Windows (and many other OSs) handle traffic that increases throughput for downloads but increases latency for WOW.
My ES timer is going off everytime I shoot an explosive shot now. I know quartz hasn’t been updated as far as I know. Did the patch cause an issue?
Mine always has done it this way- did you have it set up before where it would only show when you were under the effects of a lock and load?
Had been off my hunter for a bit and didn’t remember it doing it all the time.
I thought it just worked when LnL was up.
Use the macro and quartz addon and your hunter life will improve as your DPS…
But, before this, you must help L&L to proc more often. So, we have 3 options:
1. Black arrow
2. Freezing arrow
3. Frost traps
Black arrow can proc or not, but it will make you always wait for it. And it has its cooldown, which is shared with fire traps, so those will not be available meantime.
Freezing arrow is very good at this as you can launch it after BA procs its L&L, while you wait for various CDs (ES, AS, MS) to finish. Yeah, it will cost you a Steady Shot, but I always get a L&L instantly from it. And it works on the HCs bosses too. Dont know about raid bosses.
Frost traps are good for the cases in which you find yourself in the middle of the melee (patrol, fear, summon, boss pull, stealing aggro) or for when you have time to set them on the places where you know the mobs will spawn (like the dragonkin packs from City Hall on CoS). It will also help the fight and will not disable Black arrow…
Hello all
Under same condition different rotation calculations :
let s assume exp shot = 4500, Aim shot = 2500 , steady shot = 1000
Exp shot,aim shot,exp shot, steady shot, expshot… does 25500 dmg over 13,5 sec (1889/sec)
exp shot, wait, exp shot, wait, exp shot…does 24500 over 13 sec. (1885/sec)
Exp shot, aim shot, exp shot, wait, exp shot…does 25000 over 12,5 sec (2000/sec)
Second : If aim shot buff is really working (can’t proof it on dummy) next 2 exp shots and auto shots will benefit from this buff and it will return as more dps.
In my opinion better to use aim shot as second line.
Regards
Your argument (a) makes little sense, (b) uses unrealistic assumed numbers, and (c) neglects to factor in the explosive shot cooldown delay.
You’re certainly entitled to your opinions, but you are wrong.
Can you tell me exactly what that macro does (for Quartz)? I tried it, but I don’t see it doing anything. It very well could be because I disabled all of Quartz except the swing timer (for improved DPS while moving).
Thanks.
You don’t need it any more- it’s more DPS now to weave shots between the explosives.